“A 2013 paper by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne, of the University of Oxford, argued that jobs are at high risk of being automated in 47% of the occupational categories into which work is customarily sorted. That includes accountancy, legal work, technical writing and a lot of other white-collar occupations.”

I am not fearful. Just honest. I always knew there was an onrushing wave of lost jobs within our economy…. much like robots took over manufacturing, there would be a new level of intelligence that takes over other menial tasks that aren’t about locomotion or standardization of repetitive procedures, etc. Well… a little. Algorithms. They want your job. And frankly, they will take them whether you like it or not. I think it’s vital to think about, not in a fear mongering, panic about the future way….. but as we all slosh forward in the muck of time, where will you slip and fall? Where will you choose to walk?

Picking your job is more important than ever before. Picking a profession has profound implications that no longer can be ignored, or toyed with. So many jobs are about to be lost.

As Michael Lewis notes, you do not need humans on the stock market floor. As the markets become transparent and high frequency trading is roped in, humans will be omitted. They’re unnecessary in the trading of stock, now. In hospitality, some level of revenue manager positions are being lost to algorithms in hospitality: the price yielding can be automated from price shopper to channel manager now…. in a few years, rev managers will have to become data scientists to keep their jobs. Toll takers on the Golden Gate Bridge lost their jobs to a license plate algorithm.

I am sad to say that my seafaring dreams are nearing a close, as piloting a yacht for the super rich will be lost to a machine. Such is life. Maybe I can pilot the drone that is filming the yacht from above, for live streaming virtual reality 3rd person views on a heads up display while being in the first person. Okay did that sound to weird? I love futurism guys. So, in the future, possibly being an exceptional butler might be a wonderful job — until the robots become agile, and can speak with an accent of your choosing. Boston Dynamics is working on the agility, and Google is adding that to what they can do. Spooky.

That being said, maybe find a distinguished career in etiquette and protocol, serving as a butler to the rich until C3-PO and R2 arrive.

We need to get on this. Go into a profession that can’t be outsourced, and that continually needs human to human contact to resolve complex problems. Or make cabinets from local wood and do it *really* well. Maybe even hospitality & service will become a booming profession that returns to a kind of nobility. =) I would simply love to see people fighting for positions at every type of hotel.

I admit I am also fascinated of when and where we fight progress, and push back against the coming tidal wave of change….. and those anecdotal moments are the best to pinpoint what’s happening. There are hundreds of these, I am sure:

Pick any public or government figure that is oblivious to, or fighting against, transparency and accountability. That’s just adorable to watch. Then, we have more prosaic battlers of innovations, in business and business models:

Simply “The Music Industry” versus “The entire internet”. TV and Movies have learned from this and fared slightly better. So have other innovations. Amazon struggled against sales tax for a bit, while groups like AirBnB have started to even the playing field, by paying city TOT tax. They are playing it smart, not even forcing regulators or hospitality to get very vocal or involved.